ICT or Computing. Is this really what it’s all about, one or the other?

With all the fuss and discussions following on from Michael Gove’s seepech at BETT about the re-focus on the introduction of computing in schools, I tough people might be interetsed in this interview of Ollie Bray (Learning and Teaching, Scotland) http://bit.ly/A5AdCi at the NAACE conference earlier this year. If we aren’t careful we will loose sight of what we are about and spend all our time jumping from one thing to the next without really knowing why. There is a place for all the aspects he talks about without the knee jerk recation we are seeing towards computing. It has always been about the need to provide high quality learning , a broad and balanced curriculum and developing an understanding about how technology works, can be applied to help us and equally importantly when not to. I liken it a stage, currently Computing is in the spotlight and the other aspects of the subject are sitting in the shadows but they are still there playing a part and can’t be ignored. If we do we won’t do our learners any favours.

Although this sounds like a strange place to start I hope I can make some sense of it. The reason for starting with Einstein is the quote he once made defining insanity and if you haven’t seen this it goes something like; ‘Insanity: doing the same thing over and over ... Continue reading →